Manic Street Preachers - Motorcycle Emptiness

Description

"Motorcycle Emptiness" is a single by the Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers, released on 1 June 1992. It was the fifth single to be lifted from their debut album Generation Terrorists. The track is slower paced than most others on the album. Its lyrics are inspired by S.E. Hinton's book Rumble Fish, about biker gang culture. The lyrics have been interpreted as an attack on the hollowness of the consumer lifestyle offered by capitalism, describing how society expects young people to conform.

Some of the lyrics are taken from the poem "Neon Loneliness" (the first line of the chorus, "Under neon loneliness," is a direct lift) by Welsh poet Patrick Jones, the brother of MSP bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire.